Better Elections Are Possible

“Partisans’ chief interest is in proving that the other party is despicable — in ramping up fear, hatred and the negative polarization that is the central feature of contemporary American politics…

The good news is that we don’t have to live with this system. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says there have to be only two parties. There’s nothing in the Constitution about parties at all. There’s not even anything in the Constitution mandating that each congressional district have only one member and be represented by one party. We could have a much fairer and better system with the passage of a law.

The way to do that is through multimember districts and ranked-choice voting.”

In our Primary Focus series, we have highlighted ranked choice voting as a reform that could incentivize more civil campaigning, especially in fractured fields of more than two candidates. Our report on civil campaigning finds that voters living in cities where ranked choice voting is used perceive less negative campaigning and were more satisfied with the campaigning they did experience.

In his latest article to CapX, Jim Pagels correctly identifies first-past-the-post voting systems as the core cause of plurality winners like Donald Trump in GOP primaries. He recommends alternative voting, also called ranked choice voting, to facilitate a majority winner and allow the party to consolidate around a consensus candidate with broad support.